We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

We all live in the past, because there is nothing else to live in. To live in the present is like proposing to sit on a pin. It is too minute, it is too slight a support, it is too uncomfortable a posture, and it is of necessity followed immediately by totally different experiences, analogous to those of jumping up with a yell.

The determining bulk of Scotch people had heard of golf ever since they had heard of God and often considered the two as of equal importance.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.